I do this volunteer thing every couple of weeks at my daughter's school. You sit and read with children, help them to practice their sight words, reading from books, it's Grade 1 through 3, half an hour spent with students from each class. It's a good way to get an interior view of how the school system is working, and gives me some idea of where my child is in relation to her peers.
You get to recognize certain regulars. Children who are behind, way behind, the rest of their class. The teachers don't send you the children that are reading at or above grade level. They send you those who are behind. And you can find reasons why.
Now there are the dry, physiological reasons some children learn to read more slowly than others. Things to do with developmental psychology, the myelan sheathing of the neurons in different areas of the brain, the development of the Angular Gyrus which is crucial for a child to process and interpret the information. But these are not the reasons that you're seeing for the most part. Now while I'm not a developmental psychologist, you don't need to be a psychologist to recognize the reasons that many of these children are behind. Just as you don't need to be a dietitian to diagnose the reasons behind obesity in a patient that eats every other meal at McDonalds.
One regular, "Sarah", a little girl, perpetually attempts to distract from the matters at hand. She wants to know what I've been up to, what's new, to talk about her family and the weather. She's developed the "Charm" dodge, deflecting the focus from reading, which she doesn't want to do, by talking about things that only a grinch or very rude person would ignore. So after parrying some deflections, and a light exchange of pleasantries, we get down to business. She's not incompetent, but her parents don't read with her at home.
This is a very common thread. Parents that don't read with their children invariably have children that can't read as well as their peers.
Then there's another, "Jason", who simply sits and refuses to read. He doesn't make eye contact, resents being sent out here to read, won't speak, gets up at several intervals to go to class and fetch "tools" to help him read, a ruler that highlights the words on the page, then refuses to read. No real dodges here, simply an out-and-out refusal to do the work. And you can imagine a home environment in which Jason calls the shots, and impotent parents accepting these behaviours. I'm a volunteer, I can only do so much, but then the teacher is as handicapped by his upbringing as I am.
There's "Corey", who simply glances at the page and then loudly says "I don't know!", amusing, friendly, very charming. Another dodge. No effort made to sound out the words, merely a quick glance and "I don't know". It's funny, in a way, so charming and I can imagine the parents patting him on the head and letting him move on to play, the "I don't know" an acceptable, humorous excuse. Later on they will come to accept him as "Not so bright", never equating the fact that he's "Not so bright" because they never created the expectation that he would try or be bright. Charming was enough.
And there are the children that come out and try to read, grimace and do their best on the pages, some doing better than others, here there are the possibilities of developmental delays or, more often than not, parents that expect that reading is taught at schools and best left to the teachers and volunteers. It underscores a belief of mine, that there are no stupid children. But there sure are an awful lot of stupid parents.